“There was so much emotion attached to it,” said Peggy Starkey, an adjunct religion professor at the University of the Incarnate Word and chair of the council, founded in 1997. “We made it a situation in which the actual political conflict is not something we deal with anymore.”

As religious groups in San Antonio followed this week's violence between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian religious faction that rules the Gaza Strip, they filtered the events with familiar lenses.

The Holy Land is the crucible of the three Abrahamic faiths, which share teachings of peace, justice and humanity as God's children. But the conflict leads their adherents to polarizing conclusions over which side has the moral high ground.

Religion often is a starting point for people to take an interest in the fighting, said David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, the San Antonio-based Christian Zionist organization.

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But then their views of history and current events combine into political calculations of right and wrong, he said.

“What starts in their faith and in the Bible doesn't end there,” Brog said. “We see an understanding of the tragedies in Jewish history and the need for a Jewish homeland. I think for Jews and Christians and any objective person, you have to see one side insisting on starting (the conflict) and sending hundreds of missiles and an obligation for Israel to defend itself.”

For Adnan Ismail, his Islamic faith drives hope for a peaceful resolution, he said, but also criticism of Israel for its latest bombardment of Gaza.

The board chairman of Masjid Beit El-Magdes, a San Antonio mosque, he was born in Palestine before 1948 when Israel was founded and began to displace his community, he said.

Gaza has become an “open air prison,” Ismail said, living under Israeli restrictions on the flow of humanitarian aid and basic resources.

“Everybody should have what belongs to them and it's a right in life. Justice is the backbone of peace,” he said. “But you cannot make peace with a thief who stole your TV, and then say, ‘OK, you keep the TV.' He has to bring it back.”

Judaism also calls for justice and prayers for peace, said San Antonio Rabbi Barry Block.

But the barrage of missiles into Israel by Palestinians targeted and killed civilians, and locating their launching pads in businesses and homes intentionally risked civilian deaths in the Israeli response, he said.

“Hamas doesn't care who they shoot at,” said Block, who led a trip to Israel of local San Antonio Jews that returned last week. “We have a responsibility to stop that kind of murderous terrorism.”

By contrast, he said, Israel targets combatants, weapons stockpiles and rocket launchers in Gaza and opens its hospitals to treat wounded Palestinian civilians.

“I pray for peace all the time and pray for peace now,” Block said. “Jewish values are being lived out magnificently in Israel today ... The same body of Jewish teachings about peace also teach that when you're being shot at or when your neighbor is shot at, we are obligated to shoot back at the person trying to kill us or our neighbor.”

The Catholic faith balances similar teachings of peace and self-defense, said Jacob Nammar, a Palestinian Catholic and local author.

Muslims, Jews and Christians co-existed amicably for centuries in the Holy Land before Israel was created — the problem is not religion because most people of faith get along on a grass-roots level, he said.

The issue is that the Israeli government stacks the deck against non-Jews, creating a democratic country for them alone, Nammar said.

“There's no reason those religions can't live in peace in the same land,” he said. “I believe we are all the children of Abraham. ... But nowhere in the Bible is God in the real estate business or has written a deed for anybody.”